


A Most Forbidden Fruit

by lawlessearth



Category: Maria-sama ga Miteru
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/F, Romance, Yuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 02:30:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6405103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lawlessearth/pseuds/lawlessearth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I have no name for it. The spontaneity of her liking, old feelings resurfacing. We have not been deliberately talking. It speaks without words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Most Forbidden Fruit

There is a moment between sleep and not-waking that the quiet inhabits. I do not want to sleep but like a warm blanket on a winter night it envelops me. There is an ache, dull and somehow sweet, through my body. A reminder. I have been shattered. And I look at her who lies beside me.   
  
She sleeps on her stomach, her yellow hair spread on the pillow. She is wanton like that. I do not breathe. Looking at her, watching her dwell in her private world, something in me is severed. And I think to myself, I will burn.   
  
( _‘I want to touch you.’_ )  
  
The clock on the bureau tells me it’s five o’ clock. Outside, it is almost dusk. With the dying of the day comes reality, aborting a dream. I must get up, I tell myself. I must leave this room.   
  
I am sitting on the edge of the bed, buttoning my shirt, when suddenly I sense her conscious presence. It is soft as moonlight. In a moment, the bed moves, and her warmth is against my back.  
  
“Youko,” she says.   
  
I hear the sleep in her voice, calling, reminding me of how it was -- the joyous shattering, our breaths as one. Her voice was just like this, deep and meaningless. I want to touch her, my mind betrays me again. I can still feel her (I recoil at the thought). I feel a shift and her lips are on my neck. I have to curl my fingers against my palms to keep myself from shattering.   
  
“Sei,” I whisper.  
  
“Youko,” she says again. This time there is laughter in her voice.  
  
She is mocking me, but not out of cruelty. Even so, I feel the knife-twist in my chest. I don’t say anymore and instead continue dressing. My attitude confuses her. I can sense it in the sudden distance and her detachment (even as I still feel her hand on my skin) and it bears upon me like a heavy burden that I do the only thing I can do at the time -- I flee.  
  
“The children are going to be home soon,” I murmur, and I feel her hands grow cold.  
  
Yes, the children.  
  
\- -  
  
My marriage to Nakawa Sendou is a political one. There was a time, of course, when I thought there could be more. Our families have known each other for years but our first formal meeting happens while I am still at university.   
  
As an eldest son, Nakawa-san is both cautious and ambitious, qualities which I admire, even now. But I do not love him. I realize that early on in our marriage. For Nakawa-san…well, I do not think he even considers that in the equation. He is gentle and, to a certain extent, he dotes on me, but there are times when I feel invisible even as he is talking to me.   
  
I think it is because we are too much alike. We do what is expected of us, less out of a sense of obligation and more because we can‘t do any other way. We need structure and roles to fulfill. I am fulfilling mine. Although there have been…women, he assures me of my place. And though there have been men, I turn away from that path. I am wife and mother.   
  
And then there’s her.   
  
\- -  
  
“Youko.”  
  
I meet her again at a New York City gallery. The exhibit belongs to a friend of hers. I am there because Nakawa-san suddenly got called to a business conference so I am left to amuse myself on our vacation.   
  
“Youko, how long has it been? Youko, I can‘t believe you‘re here.” She’s been repeating my name for the past half hour. I do not mind. I’ve been repeating hers.  
  
We are in a little corner, away from the crowd, cocktails in our hands. I smile. She is as how I remember her -- glorious in her self-absorption, yet constantly fascinated by something only she can see. She is Sei.  
  
“So this is where you’ve always been?” I ask, looking at her dear face. She looks more Western now than I remember.  
  
She nods, grins, tosses her hair (She has grown it to almost the same length as when we were in Lillian). Then, to my amusement, she adds, “Don’t tell Eriko.”  
  
\- -  
  
Sei is both fierce and brittle. Almost like a child really -- brave, volatile, yet very, very self-contained, the sort of person who can stand among crowds and still remain essentially herself. I love her almost from the first moment I see her but it is a formless kind of love. I haven’t allowed myself to be selfish.  
  
In my brief stay in New York, the two of us catch up. It seems to me that Sei knows all the little places and she takes me to them with obvious delight. Perhaps it is the distance. Or the lapse of time. It has been ten years since Lillian. The memories are almost like a dream. But suddenly I have come within her vision, without my meaning to.   
  
(Once, a long time ago, she said to me, _‘I hate your strength.’_ )  
  
As if by silent agreement, we do not talk about the Now. We carry on as if the ten years have not passed. She does ask me how I have come to be there, and I tell her the truth:   
  
“I’m on vacation.”  
  
And she seems to accept this without asking, _‘Why New York? With whom?’_ In return, I do not ask her about her people.   
  
For some strange reason, we are careful around each other, and all the while something throbs in the wide quiet between us. I have no name for it. The spontaneity of her liking, old feelings resurfacing. We have not been deliberately talking. It speaks without words. This continues until the day I leave for home, the day she whispers to me in that deep, meaningless voice:   
  
“Be carefree with me soon.”   
  
\- -  
  
Once in Japan, things quickly fall back into routine. I immerse myself in work and family. The children are about to start kindergarten. Our law firm has a new client and there are paperwork. On Tuesday evening, Eriko invites me to a ladies’ night out. More paperwork. Friday -- Sachiko asks for my opinion on a dinner-party she is hosting. Saturday morning, I bring Nakawa-san the paper. And then Sei calls.  
  
I leave the breakfast room to take the call in the parlor.  
  
She is in Tokyo, on an unexpected trip -- some writers’ conference, which she is attending as a last-minute replacement for a sick colleague -- and do I mind if I see her before she flies back to New York? The way she says it makes it sound like she’s leaving that very day. I tell her I have brought home a lot of work and that I am running against a deadline. ( _‘I want to see you.’_ )  
  
“Hmm-mm,” she hums lightly, humorously.   
  
And I find myself saying, “Why don’t you drop by the house?”  
  
She comes by with her laptop in one hand and o-bento in the other. At the sight of the merrily wrapped boxed lunch, I start to laugh. She narrows her eyes at me, mutters a warning, then proceeds to explain that the organizers wouldn’t let her leave unless she brings one with her.   
  
Later, I serve her tea and pastries. We talk. I don’t remember what we talked about. She is there, in my living room, smiling that smile she smiles, blue-gray eyes flashing, and behind her on a mantelpiece are the framed photographs of my family.   
  
Am I not allowed to be selfish?  
  
\- -  
  
“Youko,” she says my name, and I turn to her with the motion of a flower.  
  
\- -  
  
I suppose I could have turned the other way. Like I always have. I am not wanting. (She is the closest thing I have to that fragile something.) But with the light of her full gaze upon me, I am -- strangely -- free. To new depths of intimacy, almost like pain, and consequences.  
  
“Youko.” That voice again. So simple, so like a child in its expectancy. “Why can’t you look at me?”   
  
So I turn to face her. She is standing in the doorway, her yellow hair flowing. There is something terrible and wild in the way she looks right now. I have come on her in a moment of disarray, but it has been so long since I saw her so pale and altered that I almost do not recognize it.  
  
“It happened,” she says quietly, almost gently, belying the cruelty of her act. In just two words, she shatters the dream and opens the floodgates of shame.  
  
I do not know how I am able to breathe. “Yes.” And yet, I am not shamed. Looking at her, watching her draw back into herself, I feel a curious start. But it is only the last quiver of my egoism, and she is as she has always been. (I am the one altered.)  
  
She smiles faintly. “Be selfish with me, Youko.”   
  
I complete the final step forward, and leaned on her as if with a drop of tired wings. I feel her heartbeat in rhythm with mine. After a moment, I draw back, and with a little smile of warning -- “You will grow to hate me,” I tell her.  
  
“It would certainly be a great risk,” she answers in a voice filled with irony.  
  
And I shatter into a laugh.  
  
\- -  
  
She is my _sin._  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This is a re-upload of a fanfic I wrote back in 2008-2009. It was originally published on ff.net but I deleted it. I'm re-uploading it here because I just got this account and I'm testing it.


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